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September 14, 2014On the Idea of a Secret (Part 1)
“The idea of a secret that will be revealed always results in one of two scenarios: death and destruction, or self-discovery and recovery beyond our wildest dreams of unification. And in the greatest ...
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September 15, 2014On the Idea of a Secret—a Conversation with Jennifer Londry
Part 3: Q&A with Jennifer LondrySandra Ridley: How do you integrate the direct and personal ‘I’ into your poetry? Or does the ‘I’ tend to be an ‘other’?Jennifer Londry: For me the ‘I’ ...
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September 15, 2014On the Idea of a Secret—a Conversation with Rhonda Douglas
Part 2: Q&A with Rhonda DouglasSandra Ridley: How do you integrate the direct and personal ‘I’ into your poetry? Or does the ‘I’ tend to be an ‘other’?Rhonda Douglas: I have used “I” ...
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February 21, 2020On Trying Not To Fly By the Seat of My Pants
I’m a writer who regularly finishes projects, but I wouldn’t describe myself as a writer with a regular practice. This is something I feel I should be able to correct and yet somehow writing continues ...
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July 06, 2023On Uncanny Delays, Endings, and Dionne Brand
Last summer I moved houses briefly to work on my novel. A friend was leaving the country for a few weeks and I gladly left my little apartment to take care of his place and write. I came well equipped ...
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September 04, 2021
On Walking with my Dead Dogs as Writing Practice
How should we think about the torrents of interaction that occur between organisms underground? How should we understand these spheres of more-than-human communication? Perhaps running after a dog hot ...
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July 31, 2018On writers, politics, and when to just stop talking
Once upon a time, before the age of social media, Canlit was inclusive and kind, and political differences were settled amicably over whisky in private festival hospitality suites and the kind of dark ...
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March 29, 2016On Writing and Gratitude
Inspired by Ocean Vuong's piece in the "Writers Recommend" section of the Poets & Writers website, where the poet discusses what it means to be "stuck" with words, unable to write with ease, and ...
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March 21, 2018On writing politically, or how not to make your fiction sound like a lecture
When I started writing my most recent novel, The Conjoined, I began with the idea of subverting classic crime fiction, something that I thought would be a fun bookish game. What if I could write a literary ...
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February 21, 2024On Writing the Same Book Over and Over
In a 2015 webchat on The Guardian’s site, Kazuo Ishiguro was asked about his varied subject matter. He replied:“My subject matter doesn't vary so much from book to book. Just the surface does. The ...
